Chapter 6

Xi Pegasi
Planetary Survey Site Six
April 5, 2057
Hollis Reid clutched his pack to his chest and gritted his teeth as the bottom dropped out of his seat for the hundredth time. The seat bottom slammed against him despite his seatbelt as the shuttle staggered through the sky. His team was crammed into the cargo area next to their vehicles and other equipment. They were each laden with survival gear, their personal pack, and two parachutes scavenged from the planetary survey equipment spares.

The first ground team had landed by shuttle some eight hundred kilometers northwest of this site. They had determined the planet was safe enough to explore without using spacesuits or respirators. There was still the danger of allergens and poisons in the plants and animals, and everyone had been briefed on the needed precautions.

All twenty team members were armed with weapons from the law enforcement armory aboard the Wells. At first, no one had thought about the need for defense. After all, they were the only people within a lot of light years. No one worried about it. Until the optical cameras were placed on a satellite bus and began scanning the potential landing sites from orbit, that is.

The plants and animals looked familiar, grass waved in the fields lined with bushes and trees, and birds flew across the sky as rabbits and deer ran freely. They also ran from the tigers - tigers ten meters long and two meters tall at the shoulder. Snakes that could, and probably did, eat those tigers were found in the nearby river. There were buffalo that probably weighed three thousand kilograms. A single bull was seen fighting off one of the super tigers. The place looked like a safari park that had been infected with gigantism.

There were also smaller predators. Hyena-like scavengers abounded, as did smaller cats and lupines. The satellite parked over this particular patch of the planet had detected thousands of creatures in the area around the team’s drop point.

Hollis swore softly as his seat slapped him yet again. He fervently hoped that the weather would be better at the drop point. It was located on a plateau that featured less fecund grazing, which kept the really large herd animals from feeding there. That, in turn, meant that the mega-predators would probably stay away, too.

“It’s time, everyone.” The cargo master’s calm announcement seemed to have an effect on more than the frazzled drop team. The ride smoothed out and Hollis shifted in his seat. “Everyone will stand in one minute and hook up to the bar. Remember to let go of your pack as you jump.”

The minute ticked by, and Hollis struggled to his feet, still hugging the heavy pack that was connected to his parachute harness by a three-meter strap. This was a traditional military arrangement that allowed the paratrooper to land without so much weight strapped on his or her back. This, in turn, reduced the likelihood of injury.

The cargo master lined his human cargo up in four rows at the very rear of the compartment. He ensured that everyone’s static line was properly connected, and that his or her rigging was correct. “Thirty seconds!” he warned, and their ears popped as the rear cargo hatch cracked open.

A thundering roar filled the compartment, assaulting Hollis’ ears through his helmet’s ear protectors. Blue water trailed out below them in the bright sunshine, and dark clouds receded in the distance. A strip of land flashed by under them in a blur of brown, tan, and green, then another, wider strip appeared. “Ten seconds!” Water, then land, then water again. Land. Trees, closer now. Grey rock, and... “GO, GO, GO!”

Hollis waddled down the short ramp and flopped into the air. He dropped the pack because he couldn’t hold onto it anymore. The open parachute jerked him up short, and he yelped as one of the straps in his crotch rode up just a little too high. Maria would kill him if he castrated himself, he thought viciously as he leaned back to check his canopy. They had jumped at low altitude to compensate for the windy conditions, and there would be little time to cut away if the main chute didn’t open properly. His canopy, formerly a planetary probe braking parachute, blossomed above him in all its red and white striped glory. He was about three hundred meters up, and he pulled on the left toggle. The world spun under his feet, and he spotted more parachutes around him.

Something else red and white flashed to his left, and his heart stopped as he identified it. One of the last people out, still above him, plummeted from the sky, parachute streaming uselessly. The parachutist struggled to reach the cutaway rings, desperately trying to release the collapsed main parachute. Finally, the main canopy broke free, and the reserve chute billowed from its container on the jumper’s belly, but it was too late. It just had time to open fully, then the hapless jumper smashed to earth next to the pack.

Hollis steered for the downed jumper, noting that several of the team members were doing the same thing. “Form a perimeter!” he barked into his headset. “I’ll take care of this.” Any reply was lost as Hollis focused on his landing. Pull at three meters to flare. Knees bent, feet together. Flare! His feet lightly touched the ground, and Hollis fell back on his rump in complete shock. He’d made a perfect landing. The emergency at hand overrode any pleasure he may have felt, and he popped the quick releases on the parachute harness and scrabbled over to his injured teammate.

The jumper lay in the middle of a bush in a heap of fabric. Hollis dropped to his knees and looked into the jumper’s face, careful not to touch anything. He sobbed in horror as he identified her. “Maria! Oh, god. Hold on, baby!” He strangled his terror and made himself think. Breathing first, he leaned in close, and she moaned softly. “Maria. Can you hear me?”

Someone dropped down beside him, and Hollis glanced at them. “Are they alive?” Taeodoshi Nagumo gasped. Hollis nodded spastically. “It’s Maria, and she’s breathing.”

“Damn. Let me check her out. Help me get her stabilized, okay?” Taeodoshi turned to his own pack and extracted a trauma kit. He reeled in Maria’s reserve canopy and spread it out on the dusty ground. He set the trauma kit down on the parachute fabric and opened it. Hollis leaned over his wife and listened to her labored breathing as he whispered her name and brushed her blonde hair out of her face.

The shuttle circled around for another pass as the men tended to Maria. The equipment drops were flawlessly executed, as the shuttle came in as low and slow as it could. The landing gear was extended, and they inadvertently touched down twice as drogue chutes jerked the equipment pallets out the rear ramp, and they skidded to a stop in a cloud of dust. When the shuttle finally climbed back into the sky, three pallets sat scattered across a half mile of scrub brush and scraped earth.

Yamina Azmat, Hollis’ second in command, ran to the nearest pallet. It contained one of the team’s two vehicles, and she began stripping off the cargo net. “Let’s get the vehicles out!” she barked over her headset radio. “Three people to a pallet and everyone else stand guard!” The tall, lanky ex-NCO cursed as she pulled at a jammed tiedown.

Thirty minutes later, the team sat under a sheltering tarpaulin they had rigged between the two modified Mars rovers. The other pallet had been dragged in close, forming a rough barricade between the rovers. Inside one of the rovers, Hollis sat holding Maria’s hand as Taeodoshi set up a portable medical scanner around her right knee. “You can let go, Hollis. The painkillers are doing a decent job,” Maria said lightly.

“Like hell. You were supposed to be on the ship, not jumping out of a shuttle and about killing yourself.” Hollis was torn between relief and rage when they determined that her most serious injuries included a suspected fracture of the right lower leg and a badly twisted right knee. Her reserve parachute had opened in time to save her life. The rest of her body was badly bruised, and she was still immobilized until they could verify that she had no spinal injury. The images from the scanner were being transmitted to Doctor MacGregor for her review.